It’s 1961 and segregation is rife in America. The US and USSR are locked in a Cold War and the Space Race is its most public battle. Each country is ferociously trying to assert its power over the other while their citizens live in perpetual fear.

All the while, three unassuming women in an office in Virginia are changing the course of history.

Hidden Figures tells the story of these three African-American mathematicians; Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson. During the Cold War, the trio worked at Nasa’s Langley Research Centre in Hampton as the US raced against the USSR to put a man into space. The intellectuals played a vital role in the launch of the now late astronaut John Glenn into orbit as well as in orchestrating his safe return.

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The highly lauded film – which has already won awards from the Screen Actors Guild, African-American Film Critics Association, Casting Society of America and received nominations for the Academy Awards and British Academy Film Awards – is released in the UK on February 17. Based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly, it aims to showcase what can be done in the face of adversity, when sexism and racism tries to put you in a box and what can happen when these walls are knocked down.

"The locals thought [Nasa] guys were weird so they were able to do ‘weird’ things like hire African-American women"Bill Barry, Nasa's chief historian

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“It wasn’t a story that was well known – even in the historical community at Nasa,” Bill Barry, Nasa’s chief historian told WIRED. “I was familiar with the fact there were people who did computing and that they were African-American women but I wasn’t aware there was a completely segregated unit at one point in time.”

To make the film as historically accurate as possible, the Hidden Figures production crew liaised with a select team at the space agency, which included Barry. “They sent the script over, I commented on it and then spent a lot of time on the phone with Ted [Melfi, the film’s director], talking it, back and forth. Then the questions started pouring in. People all across Nasa wanted to be involved in making sure the film was as accurate as possible.”

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Mary taught in Maryland prior to joining Nasa. She retired from the Nasa Langley Research Center in 1985 as an Aeronautical Engineer after 34 years

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Every scene was painstakingly combed over to capture the essence of 1960s Nasa and America, even down to the details – the lamposts, the trees and even the size of the spaces – in the car park at Langley (which was actually shot in a parking lot in Georgia). Langley is still at the heart of Nasa; it is one of the 10 major research centres in the US, but for financial and security reasons the film was shot on location in Atlanta. “They did a great job re-creating the working feel of Langley at those sets,” Barry said.

When we first meet Johnson, Vaughan and Jackson in the film they're employed as “computers” at Langley. Computers worked on intense math calculations to support the work of the male engineers and scientists at the agency at the time. During the 1960s, the organisation was working on Project Mercury – the first human spaceflight program of the US with the goal of putting a man into Earth’s orbit and have him return to Earth safely.

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Project Mercury: getting man into space

Project Mercury was the Nasa program that put the first American astronauts in space. The first of six flights under the program was made in 1961, the last took place in 1963.

Two of Project Mercury's flights were suborbital, meaning they reached space and returned immediately. The other four went into orbit and circled Earth.

Before astronauts flew in Project Mercury, Nasa conducted unmanned test flights. The first Atlas rocket with a Mercury capsule exploded, while the first Mercury-Redstone launch only went four inches off the ground.

A rhesus monkey called Sam, and two chimpanzees, Ham and Enos, flew in Mercury capsules before humans. Enos launched on an Atlas rocket and made two orbits around Earth, proving to Nasa the journey was safe for astronauts.

Alan Shepard made the first Mercury flight, becoming the first American in space, followed by Gus Grissom and later John Glenn who, in 1962, became the first American to orbit Earth.

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“During World War Two, President Roosevelt had said there was a needed to get more African-Americans to work in the war effort,” continued Barry. “So the leadership at Langley, despite the cultural prejudice in the area, hired these African-American women as mathematicians and computers. They did a great job at it and that situation changed.”

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In fact, Nasa was one of the few employers at the time willing to employ African-American women. One of the reasons Nasa and Langley were able to buck this trend was because it was, as Barry describes it, “nerd-heaven”.

“People from all over the country flocked there if they wanted to work in aeronautics research. A lot of them weren’t from the South so the environment at Langley on the work side was different from the local area. The locals in Hampton thought the [Nasa] guys were weird and eccentric so they were able to do ‘weird’ things like hire African-American women for semi-professional jobs, which would never have happened in another business in Virginia.”

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Katherine Johnson continued working as a Nasa analyst until the early 1980s. She went on to work in aeronautics research, on the Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 missions

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Throughout Hidden Figures we see these barriers of racial discrimination outside Langley being broken down as the women strive to be more than just computers. There is a poignant scene in which the character Al Harrison, Johnson’s supervisor played by Kevin Costner, breaks down the “colored bathroom” sign. It’s symbolic as an example of the racial barriers being smashed for black people at Nasa. Unfortunately, it’s not an entirely true representation of the organisation at the time.

“It’s a great moment in the film, but they took a little dramatic license with it,” said Barry. “The movie takes a lot of things that happened in the 1950s and moved them into that time period to tell the story effectively.”

Though African-Americans had to use separate bathrooms and dining rooms when working at Nasa in the first half of the 20th Century, segregation at Langley had mostly been eliminated by the late 1950s. As Nasa was part of the US federal government, it had been working towards de-segregation – quietly, so as not to attract the attention of the Virginia state government. “By 1961-62, when the movie happened, most of the physical trappings of segregation would have gone from Langley.”

Even though the physical barriers of segregation were removed, the women still faced much discrimination and battled against it for decades.

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Hidden Figures/20th Century Fox

Mary Jackson, played by Janelle Monae, became the first African-American female engineer at Nasa but was forced to leave in the 1970s after becoming frustrated that women weren’t being given the promotions they deserved. “She gave up her job as an engineer to work as an equal opportunity person at Langley. She used her engineering skills and math skills to prove that promotion reach for women was statistically not fair,” said Barry. “She actually got the promotions system changed at Langley, and across Nasa, as a result of her research.” Jackson died in 2005.

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Dorothy Vaughan, played by Octavia Spencer, moved from being a computer to a computer programmer when IBM machines were introduced at Nasa. She became the first African-American female supervisor at the organisation, and continued to work there until the 1970s. She died in 2008.

Katherine Johnson, played by Taraji P Henson, continued working as a Nasa analyst until the early 1980s. She went on to work in aeronautics research, on the Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 missions. In 2015, Johnson was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama, and last year a Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility was formally dedicated to her at Langley. Barry met Johnson, who is now 98 years old, at a premiere for the film in Hampton. “She’s quite a character. As my mum would have said, she still has all her marbles – she’s still really sharp.” At this year's Oscars, Johnson received a standing ovation when she was escorted to the stage by Nasa astronaut Yvonne Cagle.

Showing the positive work of the women and how they changed Nasa was one of the reasons the agency supported the film. “We see it as a way to get our message out to people that we’re an organisation that wants people with talent – no matter what you look like.”

Despite efforts to ensure the diverse make up of Nasa is equal to that of the US population, the organisation still struggles to hire enough women and people of colour. “We’re nowhere near 50 per cent representation of women in Nasa and I suspect that even brain power isn’t evenly distributed in the level we have. The same applies with African-American people and a number of minority groups. The numbers don’t reflect the capabilities.”

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Portrait of Dorothy Vaughan

Nasa/courtesy Vaughan family

The inspiring depiction of the three women has resonated with audiences and critics across the US; it beat Star Wars: Rogue One on its opening weekend. In addition, the film was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress for Octavia Spencer. It recently won a Screen Actor’s Guild Award for Best Ensemble in a Motion Picture. This is a matter of pride for Nasa. “We’re really proud of our history. We had these incredible women working for us that helped us get to space, so we’re really proud of the history.”

But Hidden Figures is about empowering everyone. “We’re hoping the success of the movie will inspire people to into math and science fields,” says Barry. “It gets the word out that women, in particular, but people of all races and genders, are looked at, at Nasa based on their capabilities, not what they look like. And we need all kinds of people to help us get to Mars in the future.”